By popular demand, the time has come for me to begin writing the second book in the Finding Amelia trilogy – and just as we did with the first book, we’re asking that you help fund the writing by joining The TIGHAR Literary Guild. For a contribution of at least $100 you’ll receive a signed copy of the first edition as soon as it’s published.
Click here to join the Guild.

The first book, Finding Amelia – The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2006 and tells the story of Earhart’s world flight, her disappearance, and the massive U.S. Government search that failed to find her. After four hard-cover printings the book was released in soft-cover in 2008 and continues to sell well. An electronic (Kindle™) format edition was recently released. Signed hard-cover copies can still be purchased while they last. (Click here.)

Volume Two will begin where the first left off – with the 1940 discovery of the remains of a female castaway on Gardner Island – and continue as a chronological narrative of what became a cultural phenomenon: the passionate public imperative to discover the answer to the riddle of Earhart’s fate. The book will explore the World War Two origins of the Japanese Capture Theory, its flowering in the 1960s, and the Crashed & Sank backlash of the 1970s. TIGHAR comes into the story in 1988 with the launching of The Earhart Project. There is much to tell.

Finding Amelia – Volume Two (we’ll think of a better subtitle) will feature many of the same elements as Volume One: unrealistic expectations, remarkable successes, crushing disappointments, false starts, inflated egos – and that’s just describing myself. Most important, like Volume One, this will be a history book, not a polemic that espouses a particular theory. The book will lay out the documented facts and let them speak for themselves.

As we did with Finding Amelia – The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, we’ll publish draft chapters in TIGHAR Tracks and on the TIGHAR website. I’ll welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms via the Forum.

There is, admittedly, a great temptation to write a here’s-what-really-happened book, but a dozen or so have already been written and the world is still looking for Amelia. I learn something new almost every week that changes some part of the picture. I hope and trust that there will come a time when I can write the non-fiction, foot-noted Volume Three but, until then, I hope you’ll help me write Volume Two by joining the TIGHAR Literary Guild.